SMTing and what to try next

[darklyndsea]

The story so far: my hair has always been a wurly, tangly frizzball. Switching my conditioner with L'Oreal Eversleek and my brush with a Tangle Teaser made it easier to brush out the tangles, at least, and SMTing (without honey) makes my hair really soft and easy to TT. The frizz remains.

Questions:
1. Is it normal for hair to dry faster after SMTing (3-4 hours) than after a normal shower (5 hours)?
2. After my hair has dried from SMTing and before I put it in a braid, the upper layer (is there a term for this? The hair that lies furthest from my shirt when my hair's down, that grows mostly from the top of my head) feels dry/rough. It feels like the rest of my hair the next day. This hair is a little bit finer than the rest of my hair, although it's still firmly in the medium range, and presumably takes more sun/wind damage. Is this...a bad sign, I guess? I can't really SMT only part of my hair, and anyway, most of the frizz comes from that part of my hair.
3. Suggestions for what to try next?

[spidermom]

The upper layer of hair is called the canopy. It gets weathered more than your other hairs (of course). When I use conditioner, I like to bend forward so that my hair falls toward the floor. That way I can get more conditioner on my canopy without getting it on my scalp. When I get conditioner on my scalp, it needs to be washed much sooner, so I avoid it.

I make special effort to massage coconut oil into my canopy when I do my pre-wash oiling. I've also used a very tiny scrape to oil my clean, damp canopy, which gives a good result as far as smoothing out the frizz is concerned, but I decided I didn't like the fact that oil attracts pet hair, bird fluff, dust, and lint into my hair.

Rubbing a bit of styling gel or aloe vera get between my WET (very important) palms and then down the surface of my hair also helps to tame the frizz.

[darklyndsea]

Does putting gel on your hair and not washing it out make your hair crunchy? I think that there was a warning about letting it dry on your hair in the SMT instructions. And I'd never done anything with my hair other than shampoo and conditioner before joining the LHC, so I don't know anything from experience.